Wonderful not so Whacky Wednesday
Today was not such a “Whacky Wednesday” for us in Petals Class. We did however read a few pages of the book. We only found three whacky things today; one leg of the table was made out of sugar cane, one of the paintings was of a upside down face, and the door had two handles. It was quite easy to find the whacky things because there were not so many.
We started off the morning doing junk art at the large table which is next to the “Listening Center”. We had a large selection of materials together with tape, glue and staples. Hisami asked us what we wanted to make and Mirai started to make a robot. YeonJae saw this and wanted to make the same. Griffin chose to make a dinosaur and he chose his materials carefully. He chose the colours for each section of the body and wanted to make the mouth so that it could open and close. He taped the head on so that it moved, and could look like a mouth opening and closing. Owen picked up one of the cars from our car selection and said that he wanted to make a car. He tried to look at the car carefully so that he could some familiar parts. He copied the spare wheel at the back and he made a horn on top of the car with a stick. Barbara made a dog and she used a spoon for the face and the legs. But when she looked at it, she thought that the face was too small so she asked Hisami to help her to make a bigger one. It had to be pink in colour. So, she cut out a face and drew the eyes and face on it.
We now know what to do when we go to the “Listening Center” and Liezel put the CD on for us. Sometimes the CD jumps in the same place and we tell our teachers that it is jumping. Today however it didn’t jump so we continued listening and covering the pictures with discs like we did yesterday.
Shelley sat with us at the drawing table today. We noticed one of the beaded animals from Monkeybiz, South Africa, standing in the middle. We were not sure what kind of animal it is however we chatted about the colours, the patterns, how many legs it has etc. and we started to draw it. Our teachers were amazed at what we created. When we told Shelley that we were finished, she asked us: “Is there anything else that you think you can draw?” She helped us look more carefully at the animal so that our drawings included as much detail as possible. Each of our drawings is unique and will be put on display with documentation. It was an interesting experience for us to do. Some of us are able to sit for long periods of time and discuss things and then create them. Some of us like to sit for a short time and then go and play, which is of course what happened today. We are all different and do things differently. Our teachers understand this.
We spent time sitting on the carpet and discussing professions. Shelley showed us a number of different people and we told her what we thought they did. We saw a doctor, a nurse, a fireman, a man in charge of the library or a bookstore, a construction person, a police woman and a police man. We shared our thoughts and comments with everyone which Liezel documented for us. It was quite challenging for her to write everything down as we were saying it. Shelley will scribe everything and it will go together with our display on the wall. Our teachers always find these conversations valuable, as they learn more about us and how we think and view the world.
We sang our “Hello” song this morning but today we sang “What are all of your names?” and we all called out our names at the same time. We played more games after snack time. The one was a matching game with cards with pictures of faces on them. The faces are of people from many different countries all around the world, in their traditional hats or head coverings. Miles, Barbara and Jotaro played this game. Mirai completed the 200 piece puzzle together with YeonJae and Griffin, Owen, Alona, Joaquin and Meg played Zingo. It is similar to Bingo however there is a special machine that has plastic cards in it. You slide the machine and the cards come out and then you look to see if you can match the picture with the ones on your card. We like sliding the machine and in order to avoid any conflict our teachers suggested that we slide it when it is our turn. This meant that we all had turns to use it.
You may be wondering what the dots are on our foreheads. Well last week, we learnt about India and Pooja gave us some “bindis” but we were so busy, we forgot to use them. We found them today and some of us wanted to wear them. These are the colourful dots on some of our faces.
One more sleep and then it is GIVE 2017.
Love,
All the children in Petals Class.